


They Say Run Don't Walk Away

by saltandsunscreen



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: AU, F/F, Villaneve, both assassins, but eve's kind of got morals about it, canon-typical dark(ish) themes, idk i tried to keep them in character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 17:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19090045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandsunscreen/pseuds/saltandsunscreen
Summary: ( In another world, the violence finds Eve first. )Eve goes to prison innocent, wrongly convicted, but comes out something... else. Something that’s perfect for Carolyn and her organisation’s particular needs. Now, five months later, Eve’s got a new job, a new life, and a new purpose. But things aren't done changing yet.Konstantin and Villanelle are freelancers, and when one of Villanelle’s targets is snatched away from her, killed a day early by somebody else -- she can’t help but be curious. That curiosity grows and shifts, though, as Eve and Villanelle slowly fall into each other’s orbits.And then fall further.





	They Say Run Don't Walk Away

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys, while i am going to write a fun no-murder au (I'll probably post tomorrow or the day after), I did want to try something that sticks with the darker themes of the show. I won't be describing any murders, etc., so none of this going to be graphic, but they are both assassins. 
> 
> if you're cool with that, then buckle up for a wildass love story.
> 
> * title from Ava Max's "Sweet but Psycho"

Occasionally, when she has gone an unusually long while without being naughty, Konstantin will bring her a treat. Villanelle understands what he’s trying to do -- of course she does -- but she's happy to let him believe that positive reinforcement might somehow work on her, if she gets a nice present out of it every now and then. 

Villanelle has most certainly _not_ been on her best behaviour lately, though, so she accepts the decadent cupcake he offers her with no small amount of suspicion. Perhaps she’d be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, had the cupcake not come from a box of ten.

“Why are you bribing me?” she asks, taking a large enough bite that frosting gets on her nose. She leaves it there until Konstantin’s eye twitches, and then grabs a napkin to wipe it away, smirking. “Because I know you watch me too closely to be believing I was a good girl this week.”

He sighs, digs a knuckle into his temple. Perhaps he is reflecting on the minor scene she caused downtown yesterday. Oh, he likes to pretend she is so trying, but she is certain he found it amusing at the time.

“No, Villanelle, you have not.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Do not be clever with me, Konstantin. You are not as crafty as you think.”

He sighs. “You don’t get to do the hit tomorrow,” he tells her, finally dropping down into the armchair on the other side of the coffee table.

Villanelle raises an eyebrow. “Well, I did have things to do on Wednesday, but I suppose I could shift them around and do kill him then instead.” She cannot remember the name of the woman she met at the art gallery last night, so ‘things’ will have to do.

“No, it is not the day. There is no more job.”

She sets the cupcake down, and leans forward. “Why not? Are you punishing me? This is especially cruel, even for you. You _know_ I like the --”

“-- breathy ones, yes, I know.” He picks up a cupcake of his own, and sweeps off the edge of the piping with his thumb, sucking it away. “You are not being punished. There is just no job.”

“Explain.”

“He’s already dead.”

That’s new. “Was he hit by a car?” How unfortunate, to be within thirty hours of having a really _interesting_ death (when Villanelle is involved, they always are), only to be felled by something so mundane. “You should always look both ways,” she reminds Konstantin, matter of factly.

He narrows his eyes at her. “No.”

“Did his wife poison him? I didn’t think she was the type, but then again, she was squirrely --”

“Villanelle,” he cuts her off. “Someone already killed him. You were swooped.”

She frowns. “Swooped? Like a bird?” ‘The Bird’ would be a very terrible name for an assassin. No panache.

“No, it means you got beat out. I learned this word from Irina. Someone was faster than you.”

“Quit using new words. You will never be cool, Konstantin,” she bites back, grumpily. “ _Faster_ than me? No one is _faster_ than me. I am the fastest. And the best. It was _you_ who told me to wait.”

“I know, I know,” he assures her, accommodating -- it seems he is not in the mood for the back and forth of their little blame game. Disappointing. “Do not be too upset. Look, I have even got my hands on some crime scene photos for you. And that was tricky. But now you can have some fun and criticise their technique. You see? I am not so terrible.” He bends down, fishing around in his bag. “Have another cupcake. You’ll feel better.”

She huffs, but does as he says. This one has blue frosting. Villanelle wonders if it will stain her teeth.

“Here. He bled out.”

He hands her a shuffled deck of polaroids. Villanelle turns them over in her hands, inspects them. Her (now former) target was Andrew Broux. He wore a lot of suits, was asthmatic, and kept a regular schedule, and after ascertaining that, Villanelle had got bored with researching. “There’s not enough blood here for that,” she observes. “Did he stagger around? Is where he is laying only some of the scene?”

“No. Whoever it was stabbed him very carefully, with an icepick. He bled mostly inside.” He hesitates, then adds, almost tentatively. “A bit poetic, I think.”

“Poetic?”

“He was an internal affairs investigator. Corrupt. But not useful to us,” Konstantin clarifies. “Anyway, he used to make evidence go away. They used to say if you needed the blood to disappear, you called Mr Broux.”

“And now all that blood has un-disappeared, into his guts. _Internal_ affairs.” Villanelle smiles, just slightly. “Funny.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t think I’m not very cross, though. He was _mine_. I had a new dress I was going to buy with the bonus you promised me.”

“Surely you have enough money for the dress.”

“But it’s a _bonus_ dress, Konstantin. It will not be the same, this way.”

“Ah.”

“So who killed him, anyway? This is much too good for Gregor. He is so predictable. Between fourth and fifth rib, every time. What a loser. And Quinton is in America at the moment, so it wasn’t him.”

“I don’t know who.”

“You mean your contacts won’t tell you who,” Villanelle surmises, sing-song. “Poor you, your buddies are not playing nice --”

Konstantin shakes his head. “No. I mean, _they don’t know_. An old friend ran facial recognition with the security footage against the database. No hits.”

He usually wouldn’t give her this many details, but he must be feeling sympathetic today, for taking away her kill and her dress. So, she pushes. “Does this happen often? To your friends?” Freelancing isn’t as solo as Villanelle had originally imagined, back when she and Konstantin had struck out on their own, leaving the Twelve behind. There’s a whole network, friends-of-friends and a hundred back doors, a feverish palette of information and desire and secrets. Very few newcomers stay mysterious for long -- eventually, they either die or reach out to the rest. One way or another.

“No. Just a few times, these past months.” Then his expression, abruptly, goes cagey, and Villanelle knows that talking time is over. Even now, when it is just the two of them, and there is no one tugging Konstantin’s strings, he never tells her everything. “Give me those pictures.”

She presses them to her chest. “No. They’re mine. You brought them for me.” She pouts. “And I am so sad.”

Konstantin groans, long-suffering. “Fine. But only if you promise no acting out. I will bring you a new job very soon.”

“I promise,” she swears, and perhaps Konstantin knows her too well, because the skepticism doesn’t leave his eyes. She crosses her heart. “No acting out.”

He nods. “Okay. I will see you later, Villanelle.”

This is usually the part where she asks him to stay a little longer, to watch a movie with her. Lately, she’s been getting sly, bargaining -- if he hasn’t got time for a movie, what about a television episode? There are some which are only twenty minutes. Villanelle has even subscribed to Netflix; there is so much there that he cannot claim she has nothing to his taste.

Today, though, she doesn’t ask. She’s got the photos in her hands and some research to do.

There is no hit on the horizon anymore, but this promises to be an entirely new kind of interesting.

 

* * *

 

Eve keeps the lights off in her hotel room. Of all the elaborate luxuries that now underscore her life, dimness is the softest, but the one she feels most precisely. Covets.

She has a shower. That’s always her routine. Bare feet on cool tiles, that’s the first step. Then the exact right water pressure. The exact right temperature. Exactness is another of these luxuries, one that comes from having the time, from being alone and uninterrupted.

The shower is important even though she rarely gets bloody. That’s not to say she shies away from it -- Eve’s good with blades, fast with them, too -- but she doesn’t seek out the gore. It’s messy, and unnecessary, and frankly, a little sloppy. Brutality isn’t creative. Her profession is a violent one, of course it is, but really, violence is about restraint. It’s about what you don’t do, and how you don’t do it.

That’s why Eve is so good at her job.

She stands under the water for the longest of times. Back before everything, she read an article in The Economist about not bringing your work home with you, learning to leave it at the door. Eve will never truly get to shrug out of what she does, exhale it in the front hall -- there are ghosts that will always trail languid at her heels -- but she tries. She has her process. Her shower. Her new clothes.

Once she’s dried off, dressed, wrapped her hair in a towel, she goes and lies on the freshly-made bed, and stares up at the ceiling, the details just out of reach in the evening dark.

It’s smooth and peaceful.

Eve smiles.

She doesn’t think of prison often, anymore, but when she does, she thinks: fluorescence. She thinks of artificial brightness, sharp and clinical, a perfume that pervades every single memory. There were always, always lights on, if not overhead then in her periphery. Eve didn’t quite sleep properly for three straight years.

She closes her eyes now, and waits. Inhale/exhale, meditative.

At four hundred and sixty-five Mississipis, there’s a knock on the door. Carolyn always knocks _one_ , _two_ , _three_ , a measured beat. They don’t have a code -- how ridiculous, how secret clubhouse -- but they don't need one. No one else on Earth knocks like Eve’s handler, all efficiency intermingled with calculated patience.

It’s a strange thing to notice about a person, perhaps, but then, Eve is the sort of person who notices strange things.

She stands, flips the switch, blinks at the sudden honey glow, and opens the door. “Room service?” she asks, too casual, like they’re in a Bond flick, like this is some grand and illicit meeting.

The very corner of Carolyn’s mouth quirks up, perfunctory.

Getting a genuine smile from Carolyn, Eve’s sure, is a numbers game. One of these days, some stupid comment, randomly flung, will hit the mark. Not today, though.

Carolyn moves quickly past Eve, finds her way to the couch and sits right on the edge. She keeps her back straight, doesn’t relax, as if how comfortable the cushions are is almost an offense, a temptation leading her astray that she certainly won’t indulge in.

Eve wonders if Carolyn went to some kind of finishing school. If it was the horror-story sort where they had their slumped shoulders slapped with rulers, or had to hold fixed smiles until their teeth ached, until perfection went from conditioned to innate.

But maybe Carolyn was born like this, impassive and proper to the nth degree. Eve envies her that elegance -- envies the ease of it. She drops down on the other couch, too aware of herself in Carolyn’s presence, but less aware than she used to be. Progress.

“How did it go with Broux?” Carolyn asks.

Eve tilts her head. Remembers, suddenly, that she’s still got her hair twisted up in a towel, when she and Carolyn really aren’t at that level of casual with one another. She removes it, sets it down and lets her hair fall damp, but makes no mention of it, and neither does Carolyn. Eve doesn’t stutter through awkward apologies anymore for things like this. Carolyn doesn’t weather excuses well, would rather Eve met her eye than bent over backwards.

“Fine,” Eve answers. “He was alone. I was in and out in ten minutes. Less.”

Carolyn nods. “Good. That’s good.”

Eve has two rules about her kills. The first is that she never attacks a target from behind. She can’t cry honour, not being an assassin, but it’s just -- manners, she supposes. Something wouldn’t sit right if they didn’t see her face, didn’t have a suspended moment in which to understand.

That feeds into her second rule.

“We have another mark for you,” Carolyn says, tone just slightly rueful. “For Wednesday. I know it’s not much downtime --”

“I don’t mind.” Murder-for-hire is really all about location -- it’s taken her all over the world. Eve usually likes a few days off between jobs to explore where she is, to try the food, to narrow the scope of her sprawling life into something kitschy and simple and touristy. But Eve’s not really a fan of Brussels. She’s been before. The coffee is too expensive, and she did a lap around the landmarks back in October.

Carolyn slips her phone out of her pocket and fiddles with it, then holds it out so Eve can see her screen: a man’s picture, likely a profile from his social media; it’s head and shoulders. “Michael Pelt.” He’s mid-fifties -- grey hair, grey eyes, a slack sort of face. “He uses online chat-rooms to set up meets with underage girls.”

Because that’s Eve’s second rule. She doesn’t kill just _anybody_. There’s got to be a reason. So when they see her, there’s something in that suspended moment for them to understand.

Not to repent, necessarily. These sorts of men and women are mostly alien to regret. But to know why, why them and now and like this _._

Eve isn’t so deluded as to imagine herself judge and executioner. She doesn’t decide if they really deserve it.

She just decides if they deserve it _enough_.

“That’s not why they’re having me kill him, is it?”

Carolyn’s gaze is steady. That was Eve’s very first impression of her, when they met half a year ago: that Carolyn was unwavering.

They need to be unwavering in this line of work, and Carolyn is the best of the best.

“No,” she admits, and there’s no guilt or shame in it. “He’s spearheading a merger that the higher-ups don’t want.” Carolyn always talks about the higher-ups as distant spectres, perhaps in some vague approximation of a separation of church and state. She needn’t bother. Eve is aware that yes, Carolyn is Eve’s handler, but she’s also a lot more to a great many people. “But I thought you’d appreciate that particular fact.”

“I do.”

Carolyn pauses. “And how are you… _feeling_?” Her nose wrinkles slightly at the word. “The first six months are the hardest, as I understand it. It’s an adjustment.”

“Fine,” Eve answers, on reflex. They have this conversation, every few weeks.

“Fine?”

"Well --” Eve swallows. “I feel -- useful.”

“Indeed.” Last time, Carolyn’s checkup had been cursory. She’d had somewhere to be. But this time, there’s no rush, and Eve has got to come up with a real response.

“Yeah, useful. Productive.”

“Eve, this isn’t a job interview. You can be honest.”

“I am. It’s -- you know how you feel after a lazy weekend? Like a couple of days you just spent watching crappy TV and eating microwave meals and going nicely numb? And at first it’s relaxing, and you say you’re taking care of yourself, calming down. But by Monday, it just feels like you wasted all your time, and you’re not going to get it back?” Eve takes a breath, quick. “My life used to be like that. All my time was just… _sliding_ over me, and I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Then prison was a different kind of shit. Things were always happening there, at least, but it was the same stuff. With this, though? It feels like I’m renovating my entire kitchen in one afternoon and then I’m chasing it with _really_ expensive wine. That sort of good, muscle-sore busy.” A lull. “And satisfied. If that makes sense?”

It probably doesn’t. Carolyn wouldn’t be able to pick a lazy weekend out of a lineup. She’s chronically occupied, blazing forward like she’ll sink if she stands still too long.

“Yes,” Carolyn agrees, stilted. And then, swift and fleeting but undeniable, there is a minute smile. A real one. “That makes absolute sense, Eve.”

“Oh. Great?”

“Eve, you know I don’t believe in praise.”

“Yeah.” Carolyn had once declared that giving out compliments is like feeding stray dogs; hand them around once, and suddenly everyone wants one, and then wants another one, and nobody gets anything done.

“If I were the sort, I would say I am quite pleased with how you’re coming along. I knew I was right in choosing you.”

Eve represses the urge to ask if Carolyn’s actually been wrong, ever. She might’ve been, two or three times, but she probably turned it into an even better opportunity.

“Thanks,” Eve says. Means it. She’s grateful. Has been grateful since she walked out of Waldenfeld Women’s Correctional Facility so _sure_ there would be no one waiting for her, and found a black limousine with the door just slightly ajar.

“It was a risk, Eve. I’m sure you understand.”

Eve does. From what she can gather of Carolyn’s hiring process, her organisation goes after new releases -- people with nothing and nobody -- who’d been away for assault, manslaughter, murder. The ones who got out on misfiled evidence or proof of police corruption or some sort of system glitch, the ones for whom a lascivious luck flipped in their favour.

But Eve is the only one Carolyn has picked up who was set free because of an appeal. Eve is the only one they’ve taken on board who was actually innocent, at least in the beginning.

When she had climbed into that limousine, back in July, Carolyn had said, “You attracted our attention for killing Bill Pargrave,” in this voice that was rhythmic and so _tidy_ , far too neatly squared away to fit any sort of moral judgement. “But you didn’t kill Mr Pargrave, did you, Eve Polastri?”

By then, Eve had spent the past four years insisting _no, she didn’t, he was her best friend_. But --

But she’d also tripped blindly, irregularly through the phases of grief, rough and unpredictable in a way that made others uncomfortable. She had barely made it through half his funeral. Then there were the rumours of an affair. Her alibi had been that she was out for a walk when Bill was stabbed seven times, and she had been, she _had_ been, but nobody believed her. Because she’d left her phone at home, charging -- _no GPS trail,_ _how convenient_. Because she’d just had an argument with Niko -- _it’s okay, you were caught up in the heat of it, and you thought ending your relationship with Bill would help your marriage; tell the jury, Mrs Polastri, they need something_. It all drifted down, covered her, icy and delicate: thick snow.

The walks, the fights, they hadn’t been out of the ordinary for her, but Eve’s ordinary mutated into something suspicious in a certain light, and that was that. Her friends were gone, her office job was gone, and Niko was gone. She got left with an ID number and the weight of missing her best friend.

Her appeal finally got her sentence voided -- there had been two other muggings in Bill’s neighbourhood that night, but the police had never coordinated with each other; the lead detective on her case was under examination for sexual harassment and misconduct; one of the jurors was found to have a history of substance abuse. The snow melted in a sudden summer -- perhaps someone out there had seen fit to melt it for her -- and Eve was given a piece of paper that essentially said, _sorry, our bad_ by the government. But none of it could really be undone.

The limousine had felt big and small. Eve had said, “No, I didn’t.”

“I see.” Carolyn’s lips were tight. Disappointed? Eve can hardly read her now, but back at the beginning, it had been impossible. “But Madeline Avery? Jessica Lyle? They didn’t wander into the infirmary voluntarily, did they?”

They meant prison to be a rehabilitation, so Eve would never understand why they built it like a crucible. It was made of rocks and hard places, and lines in the sand went out with a harsh tide. At first, Eve had been sure it would crush her, compact her into a tiny, dead, and fearful thing. But -- it was liberating. She’d felt more free trapped by barbed wire fencing than she had boxed in by cubicle and apartment walls.

Eve had never come under suspicion for Avery or Lyle while at Waldenfeld. No one had pointed to her; she’d been smart about it, silent about it. And the guards didn’t look too hard. They’d had it coming, those two. Everyone knew it. There had been the immediate temptation to lie to Carolyn -- Eve had only _just_ been let out, didn’t know at all who this woman was -- but instead, she’d said, “I wouldn’t call it wandering.”

And that had been the start of it all.

“But?” she asks now. The past is humid, Eve finds -- if she stops, she can feel it on her skin, but mostly, she just breathes and breathes until it’s barely noticeable at all. Acclimatisation: that’s what it’s called.

Carolyn’s wry smile flickers back and away again, a silver fish fin in a glassy lake. “But the longest shots do tend to have the best payouts, don’t they?”

Nothing says long shot like accepting an offer to become an assassin for hire. Like being given a handful of passports and a key to a new place and a bank account that has never heard of the red.

“They do.”

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think :D i'm @villanevest on tumblr if you wanna chat. 
> 
> im on break between semesters (starting on friday) so I will have more time to write, so feel free to send through requests. i promise my writing will get better once i come out of my assignment-binge stress-fugue lmao thanks for putting up with it for now lmao


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